Arts Directory

About

As Dinah Johnson, she is the author of several picture books published by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers. She loves sharing literature, written and spoken, with people of all ages, as they experience joy and confidence in expressing themselves and exploring their worlds through language. It is important beyond measure for students to see, in the flesh, a person who wrote the words in a book that might be in their own school libraries. She often hears, “You wrote this book?”–both a question and an exclamation. As Dr. Dianne Johnson-Feelings, she is a professor of English at the University of South Carolina. She enjoys working with teachers as well as with parent and community groups in their efforts to support young people in becoming literate, enthusiastic citizens, through their engagement with literature and the humanities. She can tailor her workshops, as a children’s book author or as a scholar of children’s literature, for any age group and for groups of any size. She offers single session visits as well as multi-day workshops, sometimes culminating in performances of student work. Her most cherished “fan letter” is from a little girl who wrote to her, “You had made my heart sing.”